


we have not touched the stars, nor are we forgiven

by acupoftea



Category: BioShock, BioShock Infinite
Genre: also i got a bit lazy with the very end but hey whatever, also i think my style is getting predictable but ah wellll, i was meant to be writing a six page essay on post structuralism but wrote this instead oops, this has been a long time coming though i had to get it out of my system
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-03
Updated: 2016-11-03
Packaged: 2018-08-28 20:12:52
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,950
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8461399
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/acupoftea/pseuds/acupoftea
Summary: It goes on and so does she, the Lutece’s row row row their boat, somewhere another lighthouse flickers and goes dark. She never stays, never stops, and the only consolation is that with every death of his, it is also a death of hers. 
 
Set before, during, and after Burial at Sea. An exploration of the character of Elizabeth and her relationship with Booker (because you can't really have one without the other). 
Tissues are recommended.





	

**Author's Note:**

> i'm sorry

Elizabeth thinks of it as a dance. It helps to quantify things, to try and understand how she got so far out from shore without looking back until now.

 

Maybe it’s hereditary.

 

And of course her mind falls there, to him, because it always does. Her father, her friend, her future and past and present. The dance the two of them got caught in. The dance they started.

 

The universe was always just collateral damage.

 

She lives and then lives again. Watches him die and then dies again. Follows him to the end of the earth, just like he did once for her, lifetimes ago.

 

And everytime _he_ (– and it’s only ever that because she can’t call him, them, “Booker” – there was only one that ever mattered and she knows that they are all the same but it is because of that that they are precisely _not_ \- it’s an unbearable deniability that she shares with her father, that maybe if she finds him, _Booker,_ again, that she could finally _stop_ \- and if not well she’s starting to learn that in the very large, overwhelming scale of things, the truth never mattered, no matter how absolute – )

 

-everytime he dies because of her, for her, by her it never gets any easier, the world just gets a little less brighter, she just hurts a little more, adds to the mix of rage and grief she wields from one timeline to the next.

 

So she runs and she runs, and the vindication left behind every closed lighthouse always keeps her burning long enough to tell herself that it mattered, that _this_ mattered.  

 

-

 

She’s not always on her own. The Lutece’s are her shadow – the product and the means – just as she is theirs. In one life, they save her, in another, they keep her, and in another they make it to the end before she does.

 

She can see all the doors and what’s behind all the doors. But they can rarely do the same – well, to the effortless extent that Elizabeth can.

 

There was a while, after Columbia, the first Columbia, when she resented them, resented their omnipresence, resented that in some ways, she was only here because of them, and in every way, she was always here because of them.

 

But she thinks of them now and she understands. They play their parts, just as Elizabeth does. Elizabeth thinks about Robert dropping the necklace into her hand, the codes they leave her scattered across dimensions, the way Rosalind fought with her last time on Rapture and how Elizabeth had never seen Rosalind quite so passionate about, well, anything.

 

Because Elizabeth can’t see what’s waiting in Rapture, and Rosalind knows that (probably knows more) and it should be worrying, but it calls to Elizabeth in a way she knows she can’t avoid for much longer. And even though Elizabeth wants to heed Rosalind’s advice, can tell there is nothing false about Rosalind’s claim that if Elizabeth goes to Rapture, they will not be able to follow, Elizabeth knows she must eventually.

 

The Lutece’s are not family, are not even really friends, but they are familiar and they are constant and that is the most Elizabeth knows she will ever really get in this life.

 

-

 

More often than she would ever admit, she comes close to thinking about ‘what if’s,’ about a life where each cosmic shift is not a product of her decisions, of her very existence.

 

But only occasionally does she think of Paris. Only occasionally she tries to come up for air, but she never quite makes it.

 

Because for all the blood on her hands she knows she is not strong enough to endure that - that kind of thinking. The kind where in a world of infinites, the exception is the one where she gets to go home, where she gets to stay. A world full of infinites, except for that one.

 

Dangerous because of its possibility, and impossible precisely because of the latter.

 

Some days, some moments feel like that though – impossible; impossible in the way that sometimes Elizabeth becomes too aware of every heartbeat, every breath in, and out, and in again, the way that just existing feels too brave, too alive for the existence she leads. For the blood of her father that coats her hands.  

 

It’s those types of moments, the ones when she knows she’s sinking and the stars stop listening and there is no _end –_ that she lets herself think of him.

 

It happens only very rarely, and when it does it’s always of before, not when they were happy, because that _is_ deniable, people like them didn’t get that and besides, they never got that far-

 

(and she blames him for that, for hope and then some, for choosing, for everything she is - it’s as much his fault as it is _not_ \- and with every step they take in this dance, every loop that turns over, she is caught in this just as everything else, like with every possibility there ever could’ve been and this is the constant, this always remains unchangeable, and then some-)

 

– and so she thinks of before, of back to the first time they danced, the first time she looked him, _Booker_ , in the eye and every time after, watched the way he softened and she hardened, the first time she met him, meets him – this ever stilling _dance_ and she thinks of him again and again, hopes Booker is proud, hopes he isn’t, and mostly (the truth doesn’t matter it doesn’t _matter_ ) she wishes they’d never met.

 

She wishes she could stop holding out for impossibilities.

 

Infinite worlds, infinite versions of this dance, of them, of herself. Infinite truths circled over and over again.

 

It goes on and so does she, the Lutece’s row row row their boat, somewhere another lighthouse flickers and goes dark. She never stays, never stops, and the only consolation is that with every death of his it is also a death of hers.

 

-

 

It’s not until she finally walks through this particular door, Rapture’s - in one blink to another that she feels it - the circle snaps, closes again, like it always does, like it always has to, but this time it echoes, clear and true. It feels like this time, it _matters_.

 

Rapture, that Elizabeth runs to, that she can feel the reverberation of ringing through her body, and when she steps into his office she feels the stars pinning her to the spot, closing the gap.

 

Their dance spins them closer to each other, her body orbiting his and the music in the distance starts to swell as he steps forward, asks for her name.

 

This time, Elizabeth thinks. This time.

 

-

 

Then she finds Sally (and she should’ve known) and she loses her (and she should’ve _known_ ) and she was so close to the end, but the look on Rosalind’s face, the last time Elizabeth saw, would ever see them before the tear ruptured open (and she should’ve-).

 

A lighthouse starts to flicker. She goes under, further than she’s ever been, and it is a terrifying kind of weightlessness that falls over her -

 

She danced him through time, each convinced they were both leading the other, only to always end up here.

 

Time slips, and this time she stays. This time Elizabeth is the one drowning (and there it is again, the sorrow in robert’s eyes and the resignation on rosalind’s face, the mutual sentiment of _like father, like daughter-)_

 

_Booker_ , she thinks, she lets herself think, and he haunts her here, in this wretched city that suffocates her, because she needs him, has always needed him, because letting him in means letting in the regret, the only legacy that’s ever passed between the two of them.

 

_Booker_ , she thinks, because she lets him _stay_ , she knows enough to know that this is it, because the price of Rapture was _this_ –his nonexistence, is saving a city and a man and the first and only lighthouse – the universe realigning, balancing out the players, and god, _god_ , was she ever stupid to think that this was ever a choice to begin with.

 

To think the illusion of it, of believing she could change anything – was _this_ – and underneath it all something else comes to light, a tang of relief that is falling through, lessening the weight of all her lives, his lives, _theirs_ –

 

-because it will never be anything else, her life is his and vice versa, because blood calls to blood and if each turned a killer into the other, well she can always fall on the punchline, the one where it’s in their genes –

 

\- and besides that’s not exactly true, blood _chooses_ blood and it’s a damning thing to keep close to her chest but she chooses him, every time, and _that’s_ where the circle opens and closes – that’s the climax of this endless dance:

 

She chooses him, and whether Comstock or Booker, he always chooses her; that’s it - the breakable, awful, messy truth that has burnt up entire stars, the sum and the whole and every part that they act out over and over again -

 

– and so she only has to pretend a little longer that all _that_ and the guilt and the secret, buried, agonising _relief_ was, is, worth more than what it cost.

 

-

 

When Elizabeth wakes up this time, it’s on slick, damp tiles, her head ringing and chest pounding and she can’t focus, she doesn’t _understand_ except she does, she always does.

 

Atlas’ threats ring hollow through her body and she would laugh if she could, and she doesn’t know how or why but she looks over and sees Booker, _her_ Booker (or she imagines him but it doesn’t matter, it never mattered-) strumming the guitar, and she wants to sing with him, wants to go back and back, something she doesn’t want to allow herself, she doesn’t deserve it, not after Sally-

 

(-and when she blinks for a moment she is eighteen and a man with large hands and familiar eyes is taking her hand, pulling her towards the world and away from her tower and she is surprised when she follows after him –)

 

-Elizabeth blinks, and there is a warm trickle against her face that means her nose is bleeding. She blinks again, and then it hits her, it shocks her into the present, even more so than seeing Booker again, it’s the feeling of normalcy – she can’t see anything, nothing at all, the doors are _closed_ to her in a way they’ve never been.

And what that might, and probably does mean is even worse, is unbearable, because they’ve never been cut off from her like this, like she’s powerless, even when Elizabeth was younger and didn’t understand what they were it had never been like this, and she can’t remember how she even got here-

 

Then she hears Booker’s voice, gentle and quiet in a way she’s only heard once before, cutting into her thoughts, into the world (Booker is _here_ ). Booker is telling her what to say, Booker is guiding her, telling her to get up get up _get up_ (and he is more of a father now than he was in any life they ever got to lead).

 

So Elizabeth listens, follows his footsteps (constants and variables) to find his dead body and then her own (constants and-), tries to breathe through it, underwater city and all.

 

And Elizabeth knows she should be more worried about the gaps in her memory, the enormity of Atlas’ demands, the strange unsettling feeling of not fitting quite right into herself, like something’s missing (or rather, something that _isn’t_ ) and the loss of Sally most of all, but the fear and the pain all subsume into seeing Booker, hearing him, and even if he is a ghost, he is here, he is _her_ ghost.

 

She’s got all five fingers, the universe is balancing itself out again, the dance, their dance, is almost over, and Elizabeth is afraid because Booker is here, and Elizabeth is not because Booker is here.

 

Because when Elizabeth chose to stay here, he did as well, and ghost or not it is the only thing she can hold onto, the only thing in a very long time that she can say _matters_ (to her and no one else – there is nothing extraordinary left, she has made sure of that, with every star she moved, with every decision she made to get here, and this is the only thing she can say that _this is what matters_ \- and it is so bitter and so very welcome).  

 

Booker, _her_ Booker, always made her braver, gave her the strength to begin it altogether, back at the river where she first drowned him all those lifelines ago. And if he is here then he is here to help Elizabeth end it, and even as he tells her he’s in her head, he’s not real, it’s impossible – Elizabeth does what she has always done, and pretends.

 

-

 

The voices of past Elizabeth and past Booker carry down the elevator shaft towards her and Elizabeth closes her eyes. Tries to stop the memory, tries not to think about what she saw in the vents earlier between the Lutece’s and Fitzroy.

 

Elizabeth had thought she saved Booker that day. She thought, even with that awful, flooding regret that came from Fitzroy’s death at her own hands, it was worth it. She thought it had been her choice.

 

Something else to bury, then. Elizabeth has long since accepted that her existence has always been only to meet the ends of others. The Lutece’s, Comstock, Columbia, Fontaine – manipulation after manipulation but it was only until recently that she could at least _see_ the lies for what they were. Or so she thought. 

 

Her existence is a paradox – it contradicts time itself, but her purpose was always to fix that contradiction – to balance it out again.

 

She had power over time and space itself and when it came to what she wanted, when it came to choosing a path of her own, she was powerless.

 

Booker’s voice comes over on the radio, his voice clean even over all the static. Her own is small, tired, as he reminds her for the umpteenth time that he is _not_ Booker.

 

She is powerless in all things, even this.

 

Elizabeth asks him anyway, can’t, won’t, accept otherwise –

 

_“Can you humor me then? Please”_

– and his answer -

_“I think… I think Booker would miss you”_

 

\- hits her hard, causes everything to rise to the surface again, and she’s not sure what it is about Rapture that has made her so much more vulnerable to this, to him, or maybe the desperation that the city is built on, seeped in, is seeping into her.

 

But there are so many moments, so many times, including this one, that Elizabeth is so acutely aware of his absence and it hurts.

 

It just hurts.

 

Past Booker and past Elizabeth move away from her now, but even so she knows their actions are also bringing them closer to her, to this; a sunken city and a trail of dead bodies, to the empty thoughts that ricochet through her body, and that Elizabeth is so familiar with, to a particular kind of loneliness and a future that she cannot outrun any more than Comstock could outrun her.  

 

The radio goes silent. In the distance, even from the elevator, she can hear a big daddy roaring. The elevator chimes and she checks that her tiny gun is loaded, prepares for Atlas, for Andrew Ryan, prepares for whatever comes next, whatever she can no longer see coming.

 

-

 

Elizabeth sees him. She blinks, then breathes his name, and it comes out so desperate, so _hopeful_ and she thought she could take it. She thinks she could’ve taken anything but this.

 

Elizabeth sees him, and he is no ghost. And it’s just an empty room and the two of them and she knows this cannot be (it’s _impossible_ but then again, she has sacrificed so much in the name of exactly that so why should this be any different) but she can feel his hands, his _skin_ on her own, and there’s that familiar gravel in his voice that only _he_ has, as he talks to her, warm and low.

 

And Elizabeth is ragged and worn down and briefly wonders if she is dead (briefly hopes she is because then she no longer needs to be – then it could be just her and Booker and lifetimes to unravel, even as she knows that would never be enough-)

 

-but she knows he cannot be, knows that she has to save Sally, that she has to at least try, because Elizabeth is always trying to save her, because Elizabeth needs to save her like she needs Booker, and she knows that if she is not dead then it is in her head, that she is still strapped to a table screaming, with Fontaine cracking into her skull, but for now-

 

He is here. And once Elizabeth starts crying she can’t stop, and he is so soft with her, softer than he ever was when he was alive, talking to her like he would to a child, like to his daughter-

 

She’s seventeen, eighteen, nineteen, and she knows that she is more than this but right now she doesn’t want to be. Elizabeth wants it to be _over_. She doesn’t know how to get out of this, knows that she probably won’t get out of it, and she can’t bear the thought of Booker leaving, of going back, of being alone. Again.  

 

And he is taking her hand, explaining it, helping Elizabeth see the final choice and then putting the choice back into her own hands, because he is the only person, the only _Booker_ that ever would.

 

And that shouldn’t be enough but it is.

 

She has to do this for Sally, she has started something, started it long ago on a clearer day by a river and a priest and the man whose here now, comforting her, holding her hand, and she doesn’t want to go, but there is another, younger girl whose life is depending on her.

 

But it’s overwhelming. Elizabeth is so terrified, Elizabeth has spent so much time _running_ , and she knows she has to go back but she can’t, not now, not without him, she doesn’t know if she can do this, she can’t be brave like that without him, and she knows he has to go but-

 

\- ( _Booker)_ he can’t leave her, ( _please_ ) Elizabeth is not above begging, above admitting she’s scared and she can’t stop shaking, she only took her eyes off him for a moment- he must _know_ if this is her existence, if this is all she is then she doesn’t want to be alone, she misses him, she needs him, he can’t leave her, he can’t leave, she knows this was her fault, she brought all of them here, to this, and it’s hitting her all at once, she just got him back and she’s scared, doesn’t he understand that he’s the only friend she ever had, the only one she needs, he can’t leave her there in that place, he can’t, not now, he can’t, he can’t, just this once let him stay-

 

_“Booker please don’t leave me here!”_

-

 

Suchong is dead. The little sisters are saved, Sally is saved, and she can see it now. The airplane, the ace in the hole – all of it. She doesn’t need her powers anymore to know _this_ is why she came to Rapture. Booker always had to die, and only now she realises, so did she.

 

Columbia was gone, Comstock was gone, and now she would be gone as well. The circle is almost closed, for good this time.

 

(And there is a flicker in her mind, way at the back, something too fragile to bring into the light but whispers, so softly, that while every Elizabeth will be dead, there is still Anna DeWitt, that she is not Elizabeth, she is the exception, and then even further, with that there could still be a Booker-)

 

She doesn’t let the thought get any farther than that, _can’t_ – it is dangerous and hopeful and something she can’t dare believe in if there is any possibility to it at all (and as Elizabeth knows far, far too well, there are infinite amounts of those).

 

Instead Elizabeth starts to make her way down the darkened alley, mouth dry and heart pounding, the piece of paper with the ace clenched in her left fist, walking towards Atlas and his men silhouetted by the sprawling city lit up behind them. She steps over wreckage and debris, passes a ruined depiction of a little sister, and Elizabeth lets herself ease into it, trying to pretend that she is not still terrified, even now.

 

Elizabeth let’s herself, just this once, without regret, to think of Paris, of Booker, of all the things that brought her here. _La vie en Rose_ floats back to her, a melody she used to hum to songbird when she lived in her tower, and then later, to herself.  

 

Elizabeth thinks of when she was trapped in the siphon, when she waited and waited for Booker and he tore through enemies and across timelines like it was _nothing_ to get to her.

 

Elizabeth thinks of the first time she saw behind the doors and _understood_ just who he was, thinks of the first time she saw him altogether – bursting into her library, half-wild and splattered with blood.

 

Elizabeth thinks about Sally, about her, all the little sisters she is saving and that’s the final thought that carries her across the threshold to Atlas – Fontaine – the thought of all the girls who will have a _future_ , the kind she never got, and never will.  Still, she wishes the loneliness she has carried with her didn’t feel so sharp and bright as it did now – another city she is damning, another city that won’t be saved.

 

Elizabeth wonders if Booker is proud, truly wonders, and unlike every other time, doesn’t hate herself for wanting that. This is what she gets, this is it – allowing herself to want this, that after everything, she is letting herself have this small moment with thoughts of Booker, of Paris – she gives over to it just this once – to the relief, to making it to the punchline.

 

A girl saved, a girl lost, and this dance that is finally done.

 

A part of Elizabeth wants to believe she will see him after she dies but she knows that after everything that has happened, neither of them deserve that. Neither of them ever did.

 

Lives, lived, will live. Dies, died, will die.

 

-

 

Elizabeth steps forward into the light. She can hear Sally whimpering, but her eyes are on Atlas’s, and she can almost feel the universe sighing, at all the pieces falling into place.

 

Once he has what he wants he leaves, and Elizabeth thinks of Booker, tries to be brave. Tries to pretend.

 

She braces herself as one of his men steps towards her and brings the wrench down on her head, his eyes blazing. Sally screams the sound and rings through Elizabeth’s body as she collapses.

 

She slides down the glass, her vision gone, the only sensation left is of the blood covering her face. And then a small, cold hand tentatively takes hers, curling fingers into her own.

 

A girl saved, a girl lost.

 

Elizabeth’s eyes brush closed, and somewhere up above, far beyond Rapture, a star flickers once. Twice.

 

And then it disappears for good.


End file.
